Graz, Austria

The roof of the art museum.

The train station I was stranded at for three hours.

I went to visit Martha last weekend in Graz, Austria.  Took the train - took nearly twelve hours.  I'm not even sure what happened, but we were just one train station outside of Prague and the train sat there for three hours.  The man in my car was saying that it's pretty common for that to happen on this particular route - yuck.  I found it pretty funny that almost immediately after crossing the Czech/Austrian border you could feel the difference in the landscape.  The Czech Republic is beautiful, but it's got nothing on Austria.  

By the time I made it to Graz, I was exhausted and terribly cranky.  Martha picked me up at the train station and we headed over to her place.  That night we wandered the streets of Graz with Theresea trying to find tickets for a music festival that was going on that night.  We walked up and down the city - seriously, the whole city.  We found no tickets, but we did find the wildest club in town.  I wish I could tell you more, but we didn't go in.  Instead we went to a music bar and watched music videos - I think we made the right choice there.

We had big plans to check out a market down the street from Martha's place on Saturday morning, but instead we spent the morning sleeping.  By the time we got out of the house it was already mid-afternoon.  We went to the art museum and some some crazy fetus art by Xiao Yu.  Crazy - really.  Then we hunted down some tickets for that night of the music festival - the music could have been better!  The venues were nice though - it was good to see those.  We also visited the Gyro stand in the center of town twice.

Sunday we spent the day hoofing it around Graz.  We climbed the mountain in the center of town (climbed = took the trolly car).  Walked down the art street.  Visited the university.  Walked through the city park.  Sunday was Austria's National Day, so there wasn't much going on - everyone had the day off.  Then we went home and had burritos for dinner!!!!!  So good.

Monday we woke up early and headed to town - visited a few shops and waited for my train.  The ride home was 8 hours - only one hour longer than it was supposed to be.